August 4, 2015

Today’s Cliffhanger: Will Rick Perry Make It To the Main Debate Stage?

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Vox’s Andrew Prokop takes a look at the polls released today and gives us his projection of who’s going to make the cut for the main stage in Thursday’s Fox News Republican debate:

Fox has said it will average the last five national polls before 5 pm today, and New York magazine’s Gabriel Sherman has reported that the network will use only live interview polls. If that’s the case, polls by NBC/WSJ, Monmouth, CBS News, Bloomberg Politics, and Fox News itself will be averaged….The candidates excluded from the primetime debate appear to be Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Bobby Jindal, Carly Fiorina, Lindsey Graham, George Pataki, and Jim Gilmore.

That’s kind of too bad about Perry. He’s been saying the occasional interesting thing lately, and while he’s unlikely to win, he seems more likely to me than Carson or Huckabee or Cruz.

My guess is that no one has any problem with the other six who didn’t make it. Their support is minuscule and they don’t seem even remotely likely to improve much. But Perry? His formal qualifications are good—12 years as governor, ran once before in 2012—and you never know about all that Texas money sloshing around. And there’s really no downside. His famous “oops” from last time around was the most memorable moment of the debate cycle. If he does something as dumb this time, at least we’d get some good entertainment value out of it.

Anyway, we’ll get the official word on all this from Fox in a couple of hours. I know you’re all waiting on the edges of your seats. As for me, it’s lunchtime in California. So I’m going to go get some lunch.

UPDATE: Yep, this is how it turned out. Official Fox News announcement here.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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